Families of potential organ donors could be overruled under a new model of “presumed consent,” a public consultation suggests.

Theresa May has vowed to introduce a new model of organ donation, which would automatically enter everyone on the donor register, unless they had specifically opted out.

Today the Health Secretary will begin public consultation on the change to the law, in a bid to save the lives of 6,500 people currently waiting for a transplant.

Areas for discussion include “how much say families should have” over donation of their loved one’s organs.

While 80 per cent of people say they are willing to donate their organs just 36 per cent are on the organ register.

Currently, relatives are able to block donations, even if the deceased had a donor card.

Figures from NHS Blood and Transplant suggest that in the last year, 1,100 families decided not allow organ donation because they did not know what their relatives would have wanted, with around 100 further cases where explicit wishes were over-ruled.

The public consultation - expected to trigger fierce debate- will ask the public for their views on just how much say families should have over donation decisions.

People will be asked: “Do you think someone's family should be able to decide if their organs are donated, if it is different to the decision they made when they were alive?”

The New South Wales gov't has made it harder for people to register to be zn organ donor in recent years, (and it's also more difficult to give blood, as well -- but that has more to do with the availability of locations where you can donate..).

As a result, the number of registered organ donors (and blood donations..) has been dropping steadily, because of fuckwitted stonewalling buteaucracy.

_________________It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.Our life is frittered away by details. Simplify, simplify.The mass of men lead lives of quite desperation.Henry David Thoreau